Evolve or perish.

All kinds of critters, countries and businesses lay dead and forgotten as proof.

Imo, PayPal, you’re not far behind if you can’t step up your game.

PayPal's lack of detailed information in transactions is abominal. imo.

And here’s the useless data that shows up on my bank account –

Please, PayPal, evolve. For the most part, I really like being your customer, and I’ve been your customer for years. But I need data. And I’m dependent on you providing it. Or I’ll have to go somewhere else. And that would be sad. For you.

Mulberry

The vibe to make a smoothie occurred this morning. So I heeded it. This is what came about and got mixed together in my lovely, favorite-ist kitchen gizmo: the Vitamix –

Blueberry, Mulberry, Banana Smoothie

• 1 c frozen blueberries
• 1 banana
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 2 T mulberry syrup (from a local Turkish grocer)
• 1 tsp agave syrup
• 2/3 c plain yogurt

Whirrr. Whirrr. Whirr. Yum.

Note: Mulberry syrup is a bit molasses-y and tastes faintly of raisins, to me. It needed something to mellow it, so I added the yogurt at the end.

Photo via thingsthatfizz.blogspot.com

To use multiple credit cards you will need to open a secondary business account to run your ads. To set up a business account:

1. Click on ‘Advertising’ at the bottom of the page on Facebook.com (when completely logged out).
2. Click “Create an Ad” (green button).
3. Create a campaign by going through steps 1-3 (note this ad will not actually run, but a “dummy” ad must be set-up in order to get to the next screen).
4. When prompted to log in at “Facebook Login”, make sure to select “I do not have a Facebook account.”
5.  Input a general company e-mail address or your company e-mail address (Make sure that the e-mail does not match with your Facebook personal profile e-mail address or any other Facebook email address in our system). Please also note the general email address cannot be an email like, info@, help@, support@.
6. Verify the e-mail address through your inbox.

Now, your business account has been created! Please do not click “Create Your Profile” within this account. You can now log into the account and create an ad by clicking on the “Advertising” link. You will be prompted for your credit card information after you have placed an order for an ad.

Scroll down to the last paragraph for the generational take on things.

Cautions and tips on engaging SEO:
- Question the belief that strong SEO equates an increase in sales before embarking on an SEO project
- You  can never “win” the SEO war (there will always be someone else, perhaps in a different market, who utilizes same keywords and is more geeky)
- Currency and popularity of content are now trumping some older, established content in search engine order. In other words: prior definitions of SEO tactics are shifting. New methods and strategies abound.

Approaching SEO in 2010:

- PR efforts are a part of SEO

- increased incoming links to our content increases our credibility in SEO algorithms

- Take a pulse of the company’s SEO standing vis-a-vis keywords first – Project.
- search on google, yahoo and msn, using  selected keywords

- find where we are now

- find who is there if we aren’t there

- Best area for us to focus SEO is content creation: blogs, blogs, blogs!
- Search engines love:

• • blogs
  • blog headlines
  • content tags
  • photo file names
  • captions and tiles accompanying photos
  • first sentences in blogs
  • and links to legitimate (established) sites on keywords, e.g. link to a Wikipedia article on the word “xyz” in your first sentence or two of a blog for good Google juice.

Specifically and conscientiously put keywords in these areas in the list above
- repeat keywords in the content
- name (with keywords) and upload photos to accompany content
- tag content – when posting blogs use tag tool to tag the content with appropriate keywords

Plus the tip I emailed you yesterday …

From Jessie

This is really helpful, (person)! Thanks for the conversation and for wrapping up the notes. I made some tweaks (above) and will add this perspective to the conversation: I’m not an SEO expert and yet I have astounding successes with search results on terms that my blog should never rank in any meaningful way. And yet I do. Again and again. And again.

Yes, your company can embark on SEO work vis-a-vis your website, but you’ll never win that war. Instead, focus on your blog (which is on your website’s URL – yay) and on learning how to use each blog post for increasing your Google juice. Learn how to use your blog for SEO juice; use your blog intelligently, wisely and completely.

And, don’t stress the SEO conversation. Here’s why:

1. You’ll never win the SEO battle.
2. You have phenomenal brand ownership of your name on line and presence inside of (subject matter expertise area).
3. Your big picture goal should include getting your community to talk about you and link to your content more.

Here’s my generational take on this
Be wary of intentions to control (web) territory and squat on turf (Boomer mentality). Be wary of Millennial desire to do things that are successful, good and praiseworthy. The energy now is in social capital. Getting social capital requires being detailed, down in the dirt, real, engaged and personal. GenXers (the primary force in marketing, media and communications) want to know and meet their adversaries one on one, right? So, to do they with their information sources. Get personal. More juice there now. When Millennials are in midlife, this will change, but that’s 15 years down the road. But for now, if you want to be successful, you gotta work within GenX energy around sharing of info, and it means getting personal and real.

my2cents – from the front line

Checklist for Success

hocoblogs Blogtail Parties
Logistics, Communications and Engagement

Venue
Secure a cohost.
Select a date.
Select a venue.
Introduce self, explain the blogtail party to the restaurant manager.
Check with restaurant manager to confirm a clear event date and time.
Send the manager the link to the wrap-up doc for our Pure Wine event. http://scr.bi/8YfYcg and the eventbrite.com invitation link.
Get the restaurant’s twitter handle, if it exists. And the website address.
Find out if the restaurant is actively managing its foursquare account.
Encourage the restaurant to do something special for the bloggers at the party.

Invitation
Create the eventbrite registration.
Create a hashtag for the event, or just use #hocoblogs.
Find and include links to Howchow posts about the place, the foursquare URL, Hocoloco-girl post, and other blogger reviews of the restaurant.
Email the invitation to all registered bloggers on hocoblogs.com via Akubo.net.

Communication
Write an event announcement and send it to The Columbia Flier calendar section.
Tweet the event on @hocoblogs.
Post the event on my Facebook page, published to my Hoco list.
Blog about it on Hometown-Columbia.com.
Ask the bloggers to share the news of the party in their networks and on their blogs, where relevant.
Create a Facebook note (but not an event) and tag bloggers in it.

Day of the event
Tweet it.
Post it on Facebook.

On-site
Encourage tweets, photos, foursquare and Gowalla check-ins.
Use hashtags, links and @ to recognize people, places and things.

After the event
Get links to local bloggers who wrote about the event, pre or post.
Take a screen capture of tweets with hashtags.
Take a screen capture of Foursquare checkins.
Create a wrap-up document.
Send the wrap-up doc to restaurant manager.
Post the wrap-up doc on Scribd.com.
Send wrap-up doc link to bloggers via Akubo.net service. Remind the bloggers that as individuals and as a community, we rock.

How to rock foursquare at a venue

Step 1: CLAIM your venue. Do this by checking in at 4sq and then claiming the venue as the manager. do this at each library. don’t create a library 4sq acct the way a human would. (this drives me nuts when entities such as “The Baltimore Sun” check in at a cafe. Really? I don’t think so.) No, the approach is to be the MANAGER of a place. First, to claim your proper territory on the web. It’s yours. Own it. Claim it.

Step 2: Engage. You don’t have to GIVE anything. but you could. What about “no library late-fee fines” for the mayor? … Which is kinda backward, because if you’re showing up at the library enough to be the mayor, you shouldn’t have late fees. speaking of which, I’m the mayor of east branch library, am currently out of town and have a book that is overdue! So perhaps, I’m being self-serving. but it could be a mini pr campaign. something fun.

Mrs Mayor ... at least for now.

Step 3: Acknowledge your mayors. On twitter is one place. Show the pic to the STAFF at the branch of people who check in on 4sq; make it someone’s job at each library to look at the 4sq checkins and be friendly and fun; say “Hello, Mayor” and “Have a good day, Mayor” as they leave. Acknowledge people who check in regularly. Have fun. And give back. People are sharing their social capital with your brand when they check in. Acknowledge that.

Step 4: Monitor the tips people post. Thank people for them and for participating.

And have a free event or two at a hoco library re this new tool FourSquare: how to use it and how not to use it. And how the library uses it as a biz/organization/entity, vs. how staff/individuals use it.

Write about your experience with it. Blog about it. Tell your story (once you have a story) in library publications and trade blogs. and I should be part of your story: how “the mayor” got the tables a little more clean by pointing out a need. *

Also, once you get more of a story developed (use, incidences, lessons learned, and so forth) contact several newspapers/mags in the Balt-DC region and tell them the library is using 4sq and that if they’re looking for any gov/institutional uses of the tool, that you’d be happy to do an interview on behalf of the library.

Tips, tips, tips.

* True story: I kept checking in to the East Branch Library, which is my *home* library and my fave. But the tables in the back area where I like to sit had become super grimy of late. I started to post notes on my foursquare check-ins and tips such as “Ask the people at the front desk for a handiwipe so you can clean the grime off the tables.” The

How it all began

I’ve always considered myself a fairly good citizen. I’m involved, in my own way. I contribute my thinking, energy, solutions and time to civic and community groups. And, for the most part, I’ve just always figured that public leaders, elected and otherwise, had every one’s good interests at heart, and that they’d figure things out and keep things functioning just fine. This perspective worked for me for most of my 35+ years in Columbia.

Then, T-h-e Towers happened.

I read a little here and a little there in the papers. I had a conversation or two or three with those-in-the-know and people whose opinions and thinking I trusted. And then, one day, I learned about the four legal plaintiffs. I read an article in The Flier and something inside of me snapped.

I had crossed a line inside my own life and my own definition of being a citizen. I had grown up in the split of a second. Allow me, please, to try and explain this shift in me.

See, I had watched the fight. I had witnessed a small group of people labeling themselves “the citizens” and “the public.”  I had observed the newspapers give unfair and undue credit to this small and vocal group — and its direct opposite — calling such groups “the community.” And while this phenomenon had been OK with me for a couple decades prior, suddenly I was tired of the moralizing. I understand the importance of values and vision, but I couldn’t understand what the fight was about. (And I still don’t.) As I saw it, the tug-of-war had become the news and the discussion.

And in a quiet but galvanizing moment, I realized that I could no longer trust the elder citizens at the helm of all things public. I could no longer trust them to lead the community in a way that serves all of us, rather than just a select few. I could no longer trust the group organizers, the public leaders, the spokespersons and the position-paper writers.

So, I created Hometown Columbia, and I started to blog. I added my perspective, my thinking and my own lens on Living Locally, which included, but certainly hasn’t been focused on T-h-e Tower. I continue to blog, I’ve had a lot more conversations with people-in-the-know and “everyday Joe’s,” I’ve attended public hearings, I’ve read a lot more about this subject, and I’ve become more involved in citizen groups. Now, it’s seven months later. And the issue which triggered my stepping into a public role with Hometown Columbia is not only still at hand; it’s as messy, unresolved, contentious and off-putting as ever. As I see it, the processes we have in place to resolve such issues are out of date and no longer work. The government solutions aren’t working. The press and media are not only not contributing to public dialogue, but are making the tug-of-war worse. And the once-heralded concept of associations and citizen groups is limited.

If you find yourself also feeling disengaged by the moralizing without vision, the attempted compromises that bring no real solution and the small majority of people who represent but one or two perspectives, then perhaps you’d like to check in on Hometown Columbia in the next week or two. You’ll have to bear with me. I’m going to attempt some soul searching. I’m going to share some new thinking, and I’m going to do my best to reframe this situation. And I’m curious to understand how you think about this reframing of the issues, as well.

Happy weekend to you all.